Focus:

Today's Verse:

kjv@Luke:4:14@ And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about.

kjv@Luke:4:15@ And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.

kjv@Luke:4:16@ And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.

kjv@Luke:4:17@ And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,

kjv@Luke:4:18@ The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

I am drawn to the hot and then cold reaction to Jesus to the people that attended synagogue that day. He went from being glorified by all to being thrust to a cliff to be cast down. An immediate proof of His anointing is that He was delivered from their hostile intent passing through the midst of them.

The synagogue, as we understand it, frequently had laymen read a passage of scripture and render it's meaning. Meaning then became largely what the other listeners expected for layman to say, mingled with what the priest meant for it to say, laced with what the layman personally thought it to be. If that is all that meaning is to be, a composite or expectation, then it is no wonder the synagogues became vacant of God's own meaning.

The reading of kjv@Isaiah:61:1-3 by Jesus was first received as gracious until He claimed that it had been fulfilled in Him. The meaning composited and expected had far strayed from the meaning divinely intended. How is it a carpenter's son could fulfill what could only be fulfilled by the Lord? especially as we have twisted the meaning? It is not wrong of them to at once test the notion, for of all the others that might claim to be this Lord only one can actually be the one. It is wrong for them not to further investigate such a claim and outright reject it on grounds of familiarity with this man. This is especially true of the residents of Nazareth having been prophesied as bearing the Righteous One. It is right of God to substantiate the claim by miraculously delivering Him out from their collective sentence.

Jesus turns the gracious perception with the scriptural references (kjv@1Kings:17:9-24 Elijah and widow/kjv@1Kings:18:17 Elijah blamed for drought/kjv@2Kings:5:1-27 Naaman) into public wrath and outcry. So then it appears that they understood His meaning prophesying that they would behave in similar fashion to the mass rejection of other great prophets; they proved Him right in not trying to prove Him wrong.

One certainty to be considered today is the overwhelming tendency on our part to make scripture mean either what we want it to mean or what others want it to mean outside of what God means for it to mean. Indeed, fatal is the notion that God's meaning cannot be known, just as is the notion that what God has meant is already fully known by us. It is either the laziness of not having to know or the rush to offence when challenged in what we do think we know that makes us to not test all claims fairly and honestly to further substantiate or deny. Even by trying these challenges, rejection of such will likely be the outcome as should be, but once in a great while that which does come from God will be proved in the process.

Key Messages:

kjv@Psalms:20:6@ Now know I that the LORD saveth his anointed; he will hear him from his holy heaven with the saving strength of his right hand.

kjv@John:5:39@ Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.

kjv@Isaiah:53:1@ Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?

kjv@Isaiah:53:2@ For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

kjv@Isaiah:53:3@ He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

kjv@Acts:3:18@ But those things, which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled.